The Sun Fire V210 is rated to support up to 100 thin clients simultaneously, providing enough headroom to support users with ample performance into the future.

In addition, the Unix-based environment was comparatively inexpensive: "after buying four thin clients, I broke even," says Lamont. "I know that if I need another thin client, it's around A$900 for the whole setup as opposed to A$2500 for a new PC. And even though each terminal can see the pretty Windows environment, it's not like you would ever know you were working with Unix."

Building a better future

These days, the thin clients are well entrenched within the Lamont Constructions offices. Only three or four Windows PCs remain on the desks of company managers; the rest of the company's desktops have been replaced with Sun Ray thin clients.

From a management point of view the new architecture long ago proved its value. Overall desktop administration time is down by about 60 percent, and Lamont values the ease of upgrading that comes from being able to roll out new versions of Databuild by upgrading just the server version.